“Mr. Ripley—”
He smiled.
He full-out, outright smiled. Dimple and everything.
At me.
“You mean Rip.”
I was going to ignore it. I held my head up, took a breath through my nose, and said as professionally as possible, “I told you, you don’t have to buy me anything if you feel bad—”
His eyebrows went up just slightly as he beamed that beautiful closed-mouth smile at me. “Told you I’m not doing it because I feel bad.”
Then why, Rip? Why are you doing it?
“You said nobody’s ever given you flowers before,” he went on, still too calm, still smiling.
I shut my freaking mouth.
“You like it?”
Say no. Say no. Be a bish and say no.
The problem was, I wasn’t used to being one. At least not a real one.
So I told him the freaking truth. “It’s beautiful.”
His smile wavered. “Good.”
And before I could open my mouth to remind him again he didn’t need to do the flowers or the donuts or going to bars where I had dates, he jerked his chin to the side, toward the wall of tool chests and said, “Made your coffee. Not sure if I got it right, but I think I did.”
He’d made my coffee?
What in thehellwas happening? It genuinely felt like I’d gotten hit on the back of the head and was having delusions or something. It felt like… I didn’t know what it felt like. But not real.
Not even like a freaking fantasy. Not even close.
All I could do was stand there. Stand there feeling like this man had punched me as hard as he could in the solar plexus. Then as if that wasn’t enough, he’d kicked my legs out from under me.
Before he could say anything else, before I could remember how to speak or think about what I could or should say, his cell phone started to ring. His hand was pulling it out of his pocket when he said, his smile melting into a smaller, gentler one, “Used some of the decaf you have hidden too, in case you’re worried about your hands.”
And then he answered his call. Like I wasn’t there standing like a dum-dum as I figured out why he was taking this so far that he madememy coffee. I’d watched him. When he was lazy, he didn’t even make his own coffee the way he liked it.
But he’d made mine.
On the same day he’d brought me a purple flower that reminded me of my house.
The night after he’d kicked my date to the curb and taken me to eat burgers, fries, and an ice cream cone, while I’d mostly stared at him the whole time, thinking.
Sure enough, when I picked up my coffee mug as he spoke to what I figured was one of the companies CCC ordered parts from, I took a sip and… it tasted exactly how I made mine.
Exactly.
And like the chicken I was now, I headed back to my room before he got off the phone.
I needed to think. Well, I needed to do more than think, but….
I hadn’t told Lenny about the rose the day before because I hadn’t seen a point, but when I made it back to my room with my coffee burning a hole straight into my heart, I had to pull my phone out and type a message.
